Expo Tortuga by Luc Vrydaghs
A sculptural journey through the sea and its inhabitants.
The sea gives and takes. It connects continents, carries dreams and sometimes swallows them whole. In Tortuga, Luc Vrydaghs turns a quarter-century of travels into a world of images: sharks built from shipwrecks, turtles from rubber boats, a wave of recycled tarpaulins. An exhibition about survival, about hope, about the frayed edges of our world.
What you'll discovery.
The Crossing places two sculptures face to face: SPN-18, a shark built from the wreck of an Ostend police boat, and Akotéke, a sea turtle formed from rubber dinghies. The turtle wants to cross, the shark blocks her way. Between those two gazes hangs a palpable tension.
Further along towers The Drowning Wave, a great swell made of truck tarpaulins, while a hundred tiny turtles of plastic bottles crawl toward the sea in I Will Be Back. One of them is covered in gold leaf: the one that makes it.
In Skeleton Fish, you peer through a diving mask at skeletons circling within, while the video Tortuga shows a sea turtle laying eggs on a beach in Nicaragua. The cycle of life, tangibly close.
Alongside the sculptures and installations, drawings and scale models are on display.
Practicals.
Vernissage: Thursday 13 August at 19:00 — including a short performance with live electronica and sax by Koen Roggen and Gert Wijninckx. Bar Bougie will be open for a drink.
Exhibition open: until 28 August, free to visit during the Arena's opening hours.
Where: Expo Wintercircus, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 11, 9000 Gent.
About the artist.
Luc Vrydaghs spent a quarter-century travelling the world, from the dusty roads of Nicaragua to the windless bays of Madagascar. As a documentary maker he created series such as Gasstation, Barbershop, On the Road zonder Jack, Madagascar and Nicaragua, always about people for whom simply living is already a dream. Oppression, war, climate change, resilience: these are the themes that keep gripping him.
His most recent film, Thank God for the Gift, portrayed the life of Jan Hoet and brought him back to sculpting, the very beginning of his own journey. For the past two years he has been working again in his studio in Ghent. It's there that the sculptures and drawings took shape, the ones that turn the sea into a metaphor for the future, for survival, for hope.